Where from you hail?

I've always been interested in accents and trying to determine where someone is from based on how they speak. Sometimes it gets difficult cos people who live near the state's border can just as easily sound like someone from the next state. But I've found a great way to tell their place of origin. Put them on speaker phone on a bad line. From the inflections in their English, you will be able to pick up intonations peculiar to their native tongue It really works. Very recently, I was in a training that was being conducted over the phone, and it seemed to me that the facilitator was from Bengal, but couldn't tell for sure. In half an hour or so, I got tired of holding the phone to my ear, so put the call on speaker. As is common in long trainings, my mind started wandering and in a while I stopped really listening. The voice receded to this drone in the background, and after sometime I thought the guy was talking in Oriya.
Voila !!!

Jeez! - I mean Cheese!

In Jan this year I put 12 photographs into a customised calendar to commemorate a family vacation. It was quite an effort, as I found that most of the pictures I'd taken were of the sky, mountains, winding roads, birds, insects, flowers.....well, anything non-human! I wouldn't have minded a calendar based on the inmates of Mysore Zoo, but the rest of my folks lean towards pictures of the two-legged variety. 

So after that bit of difficulty, I vowed to take more people pics whenever I'm on holiday. Staying true to my promise, I kept asking to be photographed when the husband and I took a weekend off last month. You should see the results. Gosh! The torn-winged moth from last June's holiday looked more animated. I have this impatient "hurry up and snap already" look in all of the pictures. Aargh, I hate it. I'm ok in group pics, but the ones alone - I have bared teeth in some semblance of a grin, or upturned corners to my lips, but cold eyes - gaaa. Horrific! The only time my pic comes out OK if I pretend to be someone else, and that's just too much effort.

I'll leave you with the pic of the torn-winged moth. It's not pretending to be someone else.

Under Pressure

The whole world's crazy about it, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I'm talking about Facebook, which at this time seems to be the center of the universe !

Why?

All my friends are on it, and under duress I signed up, but gosh! It's like a busy Bangalore street. People all going here and there, and doing this and that, and all talking at once. Random folks bumping into you. So why am I still there? Probably cos I invested a lot of time setting up my profile, and ocassionally I do get to hook up with old friends I'd completely lost touch with.

Like recently, when I managed to locate a childhood pal after 24 years! So worth the noise, isn't it?